“I would get home and he would be sitting there bawling his eyes out. He had become Champion Jockey but he was driving himself demented thinking he might not be number one the following year.

“I could see where the madness was coming from, and I knew that underneath it he was fundamentally a good person, but I also knew that he was never going to make me happy unless he could be happy in himself.”

Eight years into their relationship, things blew up when AP decided to go on a lads’ golf trip rather than attend the wedding of one of Chanelle’s closest friends.

She added: “I told AP it was over between us. With every other bust-up, he had known he could get me back, but that one was different.

“I had met this other guy – nothing had happened, but he was everything that AP wasn’t – and AP was convinced he had blown it. From that day, he changed.

“We don’t row very much now. I joke sometimes that we must be due an argument, but not so long ago, he said ‘Chanelle, I know you don’t need me, but I need you’.

“And I love him to bits and would be devastated without him, but I have my job, my friends, my family and my own money and I’m not at his mercy, and that is the difference.

“I could see where the madness was coming from, and I knew that underneath it he was fundamentally a good person, but I also knew that he was never going to make me happy unless he could be happy in himself.”